❚ THE KING OF UK POP HITS HIS 40th ANNIVERSARY, just as HM The Queen completes her sixth decade on the throne, but we don’t imagine she planned it that way. The most famous Martian in history landed on Earth on June 6 1972 with the release of his album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars. He created a new breed of quintessentially British pop star and expanded the realm of rock-and-roll by injecting melodrama, fantasy and glitz.

A wistful older generation was yearning for the energy of the 60s. A teen generation faced a paranoid future threatened by nuclear apocalypse. The playfully androgynous Ziggy Stardust astonished both audiences by introducing a knowing sense of decadence rooted in individual style and a repertoire of life-skills to see us through whatever adversity. Laying down a bunch of wonderful melodies, the vocals enunciate the manifesto with clarity throughout — Five Years, Moonage Daydream, Suffragette City especially.

It was a bravura, theatrical strategy for pursuing what you wanted to get out of life, and capitalised on the iconoclasm of the 60s which had subverted society’s traditions of role play and “knowing your place”.

Ziggy himself was an entirely invented persona, an outsider rock-star created by the not-then-famous David Bowie who expressed through Ziggy a grand vision and through the Spiders consummate musicianship — not a note out of place, and Mick Ronson at his most snarlingly brilliant. The album is a pinnacle of arch originality like few others, and its fierce riffs and hooks have influenced almost every innovative performer since.

The 40th-anniversary celebrations and media activity are not entirely industry hype, but genuine tributes to an artist of undoubted genius. None the less, EMI is releasing a compilation of brilliantly remastered tracks on Monday June 4 on both CD and vinyl, and all are available to stream free at the NME which is trailing special features in next week’s issue…

ONLINE AND ON THE AIRWAVES

A picture they once said could never be taken: Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran at the home of Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet, brought together by the radio documentary Ziggy Changed My Life

❏ Not for nothing do the next week’s highlights come from the Ten Alps stable, one of the UK’s leading factual programme-makers. From midnight tomorrow BBC 6 Music kicks off with a two-hour assessment of Ziggy as the Pied Piper who shaped the dreams of Gary Kemp, Nick Rhodes and others. This thoroughly researched doc tells tales from a host of their peers and is recycled in a couple of other slots of more manageable duration…

Click to read Kemp’s article in The Times

➢ Ziggy Changed My Life: full two-hour radio documentary on BBC 6 Music, midnight BST June 2–3 — Songwriter Gary Kemp explains how David Bowie created Ziggy, how the album changed his life and influenced a generation of performers. Guests include: Trevor Bolder, bass player for The Spiders from Mars; Woody Woodmansey, drummer for The Spiders from Mars, Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran, Suzi Ronson, Leee Black Childers, Lindsay Kemp, Kevin Cann, Kris Needs, Ken Scott, Terry Pastor, George Underwood and Anya Wilson.

FOUR ESSENTIAL BOOKS ABOUT BOWIE

“ A song-by-song analysis shows how David Bowie embodied a decade. A work of impeccable scholarly exegesis, The Man Who Sold the World is about as far removed from conventional biography as its subject is from run-of-the-mill rock’n’roll. Still, it is hard to imagine another book telling you more of what really matters about David Bowie than this one” … / Continued online

“ Written by the only biographer to get his PhD with a thesis on David Bowie, Strange Fascination is an exhaustive chronicle of Bowie’s career as one of rock’s most influential stars. In a combination of interviews, exclusive photographic material and academic analysis, Buckley examines Bowie’s life and music with an unparalleled level of detail. It’s a book written by an unapologetic fan. Buckley is a better writer than any of those to have tackled Bowie to date. If you read only one Bowie book ever, this should be it ” … / Continued online

“ As befits an erstwhile editor of Mojo, Trynka is good on the musical development of a pop star whose early albums, David Bowie (1967) and Space Oddity (1969), were both little more than confused collections of ill-matched songs, and showed little hint of the confidence and brilliance that was to follow. Beginning with Bowie’s childhood as plain David Jones in post-war Brixton, Trynka tells a tale that has perhaps been told too often to surprise any more, but that nevertheless intrigues in its mixture of ruthlessness, shifting loyalties, monumental drug taking, decadent behaviour and, for a while, undiminished musical invention ” … / Continued online

JUST FOR TRAINSPOTTERS

Ziggy stage costume: the Japanese fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto described Bowie in 1972 as “neither man nor woman”. This outfit, similar to one worn with a boa in Ziggy’s last performance at Hammersmith Odeon, is currently on show until August 12 in the V&A exhibition, British Design 1948–2012

NEWS — OLD FACES, NEW MIXES FOR THE 20-TEENS

✱ Dazed’s summer issue puts New Zealand’s pop prodigy Lorde head to head with the Girls creator Lena Dunham for a second Girls Rule The World issue, also featuring Jessica Lange, Andreja Pejić, Dej Loaf, Hari Nef and Tink

✱ Dazed June Playlist – from Shura’s electric new single to a rework of Tinashe with DeJ Loaf, Lil Mama’s viral, safe-sex hit and an icy track from Arca

✱ i-D’s May mixtape has new music from Lianne La Havas, French Montana, Disclosure, Slaves, Dornik, Vince Staples, Arca and Yung Lean

✱ Launched as the showcase for the New Romantics movement, i-D magazine celebrates its 35th anniversary issue No 337 with British photographer Alasdair McLellan snapping the hottest faces in fashion, music, art and film. In addition to 18 supermodel cover stars, we meet the rising stars of NY, London and LA, from actor Ezra Miller to songstress Grimes. Pictured: Jourdan Dunn wearing top and trousers Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci

✱ After cancelling their US tour because of Boy George’s lack of voice, Culture Club committed professional suicide in a fly-on-the-wall TV documentary. Now they have rescheduled the US tour to start on 17 July and meanwhile have turned to crowd-funding to bring their album Tribes to market. Pre-ordering has been extended for the fourth time, now until the end of June, through PledgeMusic, a direct-to-fan music platform, with the price upped from £12.46 to £15.46 and as yet, still no release date confirmed! As George told the Gender Benders TV show: “I haven’t had a record deal since 1995.”

RIP – STEVE STRANGE

◆ On Mi-soul radio on 13 Feb 2015 deejay Rusty Egan paid musical tribute to Steve Strange, his sidekick in founding the legendary Blitz Club, who died the day before: “Music says everything I could ever want to say” ... Catch up at Mixcloud

◆ During Feb 2015, Shapers of the 80s received more than 37,300 visits, its highest monthly total since launching five years ago. These came in response to our coverage of the death of Steve Strange. In the two weeks after we published tributes from Steve's friends among the former Blitz Kids, 25,000 views were counted. These have been record responses to any topic covered here

FIONA ON ‘REAL’ THEATRE…

❏ The Blitz Kids outflanked most of the 80s copyists who followed their Bowie-inspired passion for changing their look as often as possible. You’d find the follow-on generation of posers at Studio 21 on Oxford Street or the Batcave, or in a back barrel at Birmingham’s Rum Runner. After the Blitz caravanserai had moved on into the world of work, fashion designer Fiona Dealey said: “You look at these little Bat people with make-up dribbling down their necks and you feel like saying, ‘Sorry darling, not enough loose powder’. The difference was that our make-up was stage slap, Leichner not Factor. The clothes came from a costumier, Charles Fox not Flip. Dressing for the Blitz was real theatre. It wasn’t just another uniform. You felt glamorous.”

Shapers of the 80s “invaluable”

◆ Shapersofthe80s is declared an “invaluable website” by historian Dominic Sandbrook, author of the rich new cultural analysis, Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974–1979. We report how Sandbrook gives generous credit to key influencers on youth culture. His unstuffy combination of high and low life energised the BBC2 series The Seventies aired in 2012

◆ Elsewhere at Shapers of the 80s, telly don Simon Schama succinctly expresses why we should document the “irreverent freedom” that is a special aspect of life in Britain

Sade in a nutshell ♫ ♫

✱ After 2010’s Grammy Award winning Soldier Of Love LP, Sade went on to release The Ultimate Collection. The 29 tracks on two CDs included three new numbers, plus a version of Moon & The Sky featuring Jay-Z . . . In 2011 the band won a Grammy award for Best R&B Performance By A Group for the track Soldier Of Love

SPANDAU 30 YEARS ON

◆ Tony Hadley at Facebook: “My wife and I are pleased to announce the safe arrival of our beautiful baby daughter born on February 6, 2012” ... But for Spandau, Tony dropped another bombshell on ITV’s Loose Women on May 16

Archive — Many publication dates are arbitrary, so click and take pot luck!

Archive — Many publication dates are arbitrary, so click and take pot luck!

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